Why public domain

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

People can sue for anything in the US. Doesn't mean their lawsuit has merrit.

You come up with your foundational principals. That someone will try to work the system doesn't change your foundational principals.

The foundational principal of copyright SHOULD be: the author who creates a unique work, owns the work....and all uses of the work. Forever...as long as the work remains economically active. Orphaned works fall into the public domain.

Someone who creates original work that builds on elements of public domain - only the original aspects can be copyrighted.

For fiction which has no element of scarcity - there is no time limit on ownership.

Now...build out the laws from these principles.

That, of course, is your personal opinion of how it should be, though so far you haven't been able to articulate a rational for it other than because you say so.

Over the course of this thread, there are been many people posting reasons why we shouldn't have eternal copyright, ranging from philosophical to practical.

There is a political philosophy that says that society does things a certain way for a reason. Unless you understand the reason things are done a certain way, it's unwise to change it since you don't know what you are going to break.

As I've said before, if we are talking pure copyright, i.e. the right to make copies of a specific work, I have no real philosophical issues with the author milking it as long as work remains available to the public. It's only when we start talking about derivative works that I start to object strongly. I see no rational for preventing other writers from including Hobbits or muggles in their works. As long as the other writer only doesn't plagiarize the book (note that in a number of cases, the suit isn't about copyright, but rather plagiarizing), then have at it.

[Greg Anos]

Most people here fail to realize that there is already a large body of law concerning PP that is not perpetual, by design. I need to explicitly describe it.

I own a piece of land. Can't get any more perpetual than land ownership, right?

Somebody want to buy the land. I don't want to sell. Still at some ridiculous price, I would sell.

That somebody says "Ok, I'll make you a deal. I will pay you 5% of what the current market value for that piece of land, for the OPTION to buy that land at that ridiculous price - FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS. If, at the end of 10 years, I'm still not willing to pay the ridiculous price for that land; my OPTION EXPIRES, and you keep the 5%, free and clear. Deal?"

Sounds good, I agree.

Now, here is the point. Whether you consider that option IP or PP, IT IS NOT PERPETUAL. It will expire in 10 years. If it didn't expire, I would not have granted the option.

The option can be bought and sold, pledged against credit, sued against or for, literally anything either IP or PP can be used for. But it is wasting away.

Should suddenly it be made perpetual? It would benefit the holder of the option, and disadvantage the grantor of the option.

Exactly the same issues and logic apply for copyright.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

That, of course, is your personal opinion of how it should be, though so far you haven't been able to articulate a rational for it other than because you say so.

You not agreeing with my rationale is quite different from me not putting one forth. And I have done so, over and over again.

If I create wealth or property it is mine. Society may, through taxes, appropriate some of that wealth. But society doesn't just grab my property or put a limit to my ownership.

Intellectual property of the "non scarce type" should follow the same. Scarce types would be medicines, mechanics and the like where there is only going to be so many viable solutions. Therefore, patents have reasonable time limits such that the inventor gets a monopoly for a time and society gets it afterward.

This only makes sense for those things where there is scarcity.

There is no scarcity in fiction. There is never a time when society should own Mickey Mouse. Anybody can create their own cartoon mouse.

Giving Mickey Mouse to society is no different at all than a government deciding to take ownership of oil or banking or any other commercial concern.

At least with "imminent domain" the government makes a case that a particular piece of private property is so important for another use (like a highway or railroad or commercial development).

Location, location, location. There is no such thing as "society needing to own Mickey Mouse to build a free way".

It is to society's benefit to not have books just disappear. Therefore, in Lee's Rules of How Things Should Be - non-economically active works should, after a time, fall into the public domain. So someday you'd be able to write a HR Puffinstuff story, but you're probably never going to be able to write your own Harry Potter book without securing rights.

Money your kids inherit from you doesn't disappear 20 years after you are dead. Do well enough, and generations of your progeny can benefit from your money...as well as any charities YOU direct the money towards.

Don't like it? Use taxes like the inheritance tax to grab that money for society rather than treating an author's work as somehow less worth than a farmer's work.

Desiring the time to come when a book you like falls into public domain so you can get a free copy is no different than waiting for a coup to occur to take away your neighbor's Sugar cane farm "for society"

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

You not agreeing with my rationale is quite different from me not putting one forth. And I have done so, over and over again.

If I create wealth or property it is mine. Society may, through taxes, appropriate some of that wealth. But society doesn't just grab my property or put a limit to my ownership.

Intellectual property of the "non scarce type" should follow the same. Scarce types would be medicines, mechanics and the like where there is only going to be so many viable solutions. Therefore, patents have reasonable time limits such that the inventor gets a monopoly for a time and society gets it afterward.

This only makes sense for those things where there is scarcity.

There is no scarcity in fiction. There is never a time when society should own Mickey Mouse. Anybody can create their own cartoon mouse.

Giving Mickey Mouse to society is no different at all than a government deciding to take ownership of oil or banking or any other commercial concern.

At least with "imminent domain" the government makes a case that a particular piece of private property is so important for another use (like a highway or railroad or commercial development).

Location, location, location. There is no such thing as "society needing to own Mickey Mouse to build a free way".

It is to society's benefit to not have books just disappear. Therefore, in Lee's Rules of How Things Should Be - non-economically active works should, after a time, fall into the public domain. So someday you'd be able to write a HR Puffinstuff story, but you're probably never going to be able to write your own Harry Potter book without securing rights.

Money your kids inherit from you doesn't disappear 20 years after you are dead. Do well enough, and generations of your progeny can benefit from your money...as well as any charities YOU direct the money towards.

Don't like it? Use taxes like the inheritance tax to grab that money for society rather than treating an author's work as somehow less worth than a farmer's work.

Desiring the time to come when a book you like falls into public domain so you can get a free copy is no different than waiting for a coup to occur to take away your neighbor's Sugar cane farm "for society"

You say it's property because you say it's property. That's no rational.

[barryem]

I've been thinking about this thread some. I think we've hashed and rehashed whether copyright should be perpetual enough that there's not much else to say. So I've been thinking of it in terms of something I said earlier. Copyright is more to benefit society as a whole than it is to benefit any individuals within that society. But does it really benefit society anymore?

It used to. We wanted books to read and we wanted to encourage creative people to write them and copyright does that.

Now we have so many books already and so many more published each year that I wonder why we want to encourage it anymore. Maybe if we stopped copyright only the people who loved to write would publish books and those hoping to make a living from it would find other ways.

We'd probably still have more new books every year than we could possibly read, at least I think we would. And maybe more people would start reading more older books. I'm a little biased here because I happen to like older books. But still it's a valid question: how many new books do we really need every year?

In Sartre's "Nausia" there was a character referred to as The Self Taught Man who spent most of his time in the library determined to read every book in the library from A to Z. However, several years into it, when he's just begun books whose authors begin with B, he finds that he has to go back and read the new books with authors beginning with A that were written after he read past that point. Little by little the other characters realize he'll never be able to finish.

Today we'd never get past authors beginning with Ab.

Barry

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by barryem

Now we have so many books already and so many more published each year that I wonder why we want to encourage it anymore.

So if I want to read about the war in Syria today, I should be satisfied to read about some other, older one? And if I want to read an outstandingly researched and edited book, on a disease I was just diagnosed with, I should be satisfied to read one with outdated findings?

While I think the case for copyright is a stronger for non-fiction than fiction, it's reasonable people wish to read outstanding police procedurals where the detective uses the latest DNA tools, or where the crime is set in a nation-state that didn't exist twenty years ago, or then had a quite different type of government.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by barryem

I've been thinking about this thread some. I think we've hashed and rehashed whether copyright should be perpetual enough that there's not much else to say. So I've been thinking of it in terms of something I said earlier. Copyright is more to benefit society as a whole than it is to benefit any individuals within that society. But does it really benefit society anymore?

It used to. We wanted books to read and we wanted to encourage creative people to write them and copyright does that.

Now we have so many books already and so many more published each year that I wonder why we want to encourage it anymore. Maybe if we stopped copyright only the people who loved to write would publish books and those hoping to make a living from it would find other ways.

We'd probably still have more new books every year than we could possibly read, at least I think we would. And maybe more people would start reading more older books. I'm a little biased here because I happen to like older books. But still it's a valid question: how many new books do we really need every year?

In Sartre's "Nausia" there was a character referred to as The Self Taught Man who spent most of his time in the library determined to read every book in the library from A to Z. However, several years into it, when he's just begun books whose authors begin with B, he finds that he has to go back and read the new books with authors beginning with A that were written after he read past that point. Little by little the other characters realize he'll never be able to finish.

Today we'd never get past authors beginning with Ab.

Barry

I think the flaw in your thinking is that you seem to assume everyone likes the same thing. Certainly, we get a lot more books published every year than any one person can read, but different people like different books. Who knows what book will be the next Harry Potter? I'm sure that most publishers wishes they could tell.

For the most part, individual imprints tend to put out the same number of books as before, it's just there are a lot more imprints. Plus, we now have independent authors and backlist books, all available for purchase. This wasn't really possible when you were limited to what a book shop had on it's shelves.

One of the wonderful things about the human imagination is how diverse it is. Just when you think that everything worth saying has been said, someone comes up with something new.

[hildea]

Originally Posted by barryem

Copyright is more to benefit society as a whole than it is to benefit any individuals within that society. But does it really benefit society anymore?

It used to. We wanted books to read and we wanted to encourage creative people to write them and copyright does that.

Now we have so many books already and so many more published each year that I wonder why we want to encourage it anymore. Maybe if we stopped copyright only the people who loved to write would publish books and those hoping to make a living from it would find other ways.

"only the people who loved to write would publish books"? Surely you mean "only people who can afford to spend a significant amount of time on a hobby would publish books".

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

... it's reasonable people wish to read outstanding police procedurals where the detective uses the latest DNA tools, or where the crime is set in a nation-state that didn't exist twenty years ago, or then had a quite different type of government.

Absolutely. Not to mention the expansion of whose voices and perspectives we get to read, as publishing (slowly) gets more diverse.

Art is a conversation, not just with other art, but with all of society. To take one just example: When I read post-apocalyptic fiction in the 80s, the books took place after a nuclear war. These days, the big threat is environmental, and there's lots of great fiction which deal with that in different ways, both pessimistic and (cautiously) optimistic.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by hildea

"...

Art is a conversation, not just with other art, but with all of society. To take one just example: When I read post-apocalyptic fiction in the 80s, the books took place after a nuclear war. These days, the big threat is environmental, and there's lots of great fiction which deal with that in different ways, both pessimistic and (cautiously) optimistic.

Odd, based on the books published, I thought the the big threat is the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse.

[BadBilly]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I think copyright of publication + 95 or even life + 50 is ridiculous.

There are only a few professions in which the practitioner can keep earning over and over and over for work done only once: writer, musician, and to some extent, software engineer/programmer (somewhat less there, because software needs to be maintained and thus costs work).

I think it's ridiculous that an author/musician can basically create one work, and if it becomes popular and stays popular enough, not only they themselves but generations after them can live off of it.

Most professions don't have a "produce once, earn for a 120 years" option.

At first glance, copyright law and royalties may look like some kind of lazy thievery to an hourly-wage worker. Let's say you're a Walmart greeter. You have to stand at the front of the store and say "Welcome to Walmart, here is a cart" for hours every day. Oh, the author's life looks like a sweet scam because they get paid for every copy of the book sold.

However, consider that first, unlike your Walmart shift, nobody is paying them for their time to do the work. You get your hourly wage just for being there, even if nobody comes in. The author invests hundreds or thousands of hours in producing the work.

Second, the author only makes money if people like the product and buy it. It would be like if, in your job as a Walmart greeter, you were only paid tips. If customers didn't feel your greeting was to their liking, you'd go home empty handed.

Finally, and this is THE major point: Every copy of the work sold is a separate act of work. Readers are paying, for example, $20 to be entertained by a book. The author's story does the entertaining. Because of the nature of written language, a book allows the author to tell the story and the reader to receive it at different times. Buying a book is, in essence, buying a ticket to a storytelling performance. So, selling 100,000 copies of a book is serving 100,000 (or more, because of multiple readers per copy) customers over time. Surely you expect to be paid for every hour you're at the Walmart. Would it be fair if you were only paid for your first day?

There are certainly valid discussions to be had about how copyright should work, but the idea that somebody should not be compensated for the work that they do that is valued by others is dumb.

[BadBilly]

Originally Posted by barryem

When a carpenter builds a house he sells the house and no longer has any claim to it. When an artist paints a picture and sells it he loses any claim to it. Why isn't something comparable also fair for authors?

In the USA the original copyright period was 14 years, renewable once. Even that seems ridiculously long to me. If a writer writes a book it seems more than fair to give him 5 or 10 years to recoup the time he spent on it. The point of copyright is to give the author a chance to make money. Five years would give most authors 99.99% of what they'll ever get for most books. If a book is exceptional then he probably already made a bunch from it.

I'm only talking about books. Movies may or may not have different issues. I enjoy movies but I don't care enough about them to have thought about their issues.

Barry

I assume you no longer draw a salary or wage for your job. It was fair that you do so for five or ten years. If you are any good at it, you probably already made a bundle. Just because you labour still has value to people doesn't mean you should be paid for it.

My friend recently published a novel that she's been working on the since before I met her (8 years). It's published with a small house. The subject matter is rather bleak, so it's not going to sell millions, but it probably has some life and will sell okay for years. Get your hands off her money.

Another friend has a great novel in the works. He's been at it for 10+ years. Given it's nature and quality, I have no doubt it will be a Canadian bestseller, but he's not going to make millions off it. He's entitle to enjoy the results of his effort.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

So if I want to read about the war in Syria today, I should be satisfied to read about some other, older one? And if I want to read an outstandingly researched and edited book, on a disease I was just diagnosed with, I should be satisfied to read one with outdated findings?

Nope! I was thinking in terms of novels and I forgot to limit my comments to that.

Barry

[barryem]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I think the flaw in your thinking is that you seem to assume everyone likes the same thing. Certainly, we get a lot more books published every year than any one person can read, but different people like different books. Who knows what book will be the next Harry Potter? I'm sure that most publishers wishes they could tell.

For the most part, individual imprints tend to put out the same number of books as before, it's just there are a lot more imprints. Plus, we now have independent authors and backlist books, all available for purchase. This wasn't really possible when you were limited to what a book shop had on it's shelves.

One of the wonderful things about the human imagination is how diverse it is. Just when you think that everything worth saying has been said, someone comes up with something new.

I'm not saying people shouldn't say new things. Of course we want new ideas and new books. But we can be happy with a lot fewer than today.

I just googled to find out how many new books there were in 2018 and I found two numbers, one for self published books, which is said to be over a million, although it doesn't say if that's worldwide or in the USA, and another that says 304,912 distinct books were published in the USA. I don't know if that includes self-published books. So the numbers are iffy but close enough to re-enforce my point that we can do with fewer books.

If we were to do away with copyright that wouldn't mean no more books. It might mean a lot fewer books but those would be from the authors who most love to write and I don't really see that as a bad thing.

I'm not sure I'm really advocating that we end copyright. Books are important to me and that would be a risky move with no more information than I have. But I think it's worth some discussion.

As for the next Harry Potter, or substitute your favorite blockbuster, that's not really something I care about. How many people other than publishers and authors do care about it? The Harry Potter fans have their books and they don't really have any reason to think they wouldn't have them if there were no copyrights. Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they would. That's not really part of this.


Barry

[barryem]

Originally Posted by hildea

"only the people who loved to write would publish books"? Surely you mean "only people who can afford to spend a significant amount of time on a hobby would publish books".

The vast majority of people who spent a significant amount of time writing a book never made a dime from it. Most of them were not affluent. They took a chance and lost. There are only a very few winners and all of them know that starting out. Removing copyright just might remove some of those who don't love writing from the mix and increase the chances for those who do.

Originally Posted by hildea

Not to mention the expansion of whose voices and perspectives we get to read, as publishing (slowly) gets more diverse.

That might be a valid argument against my suggestion. It's something to consider.

Barry

[barryem]

Originally Posted by BadBilly

At first glance, copyright law and royalties may look like some kind of lazy thievery to an hourly-wage worker.

I don't think anyone is saying copyright looks like thievery. It's a social thing. Something we've chosen to do as a society. The way we've chosen it has been hijacked but we elected the people who allowed that to happen so, again, we did it.

Barry